iPod vs. Zune: January 2008 High End MP3 Player Roundup
by Ryan Smith on January 21, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
iPod Touch
Earlier we called the iPod Classic the old guard, and for good reason. The iPod line started as just an audio player and that's what the Classic does best. However it's also at an evolutionary dead end, it isn't practical to expand it to both be a more functional device and also the iPod Classic at the same time. The next step requires a clean break from the old guard and so we have the new guard, the iPod Touch.
Fundamentally the iPod Touch is a stripped down iPhone. It has the same ARM processor, the same 512MB of RAM, the same version of OS X, the same 3.5" touch screen and many of the same applications. The Touch is for all practical purposes a very small PDA/computer optimized for media use. If you've read our iPhone review then you already know what to expect, otherwise keep reading.
Whereas the iPod Classic was the natural evolution of the iPod line, the Touch is practically unrecognizable as an iPod. The large touch screen eliminates the need for all buttons except a single home button, marking the end of the iconic iPod scroll wheel. You almost can't compare the two, they're simply such different devices that it's an iPod in name only.
Besides the large touch screen, as the new guard the Touch hardware also has a few other key differences compared to the old guard. In spite of being a high-end player in the price range of hard drive based players, it's flash memory based Coming in at $299 for 8GB and $399 for 16GB, it's $50 more expensive for 1/10th the capacity of the two respective iPod Classic models. This makes the Touch a gamble for Apple, compared to other players it's ridiculously expensive for the capacity it has.
Given the space needed to support the large screen, the more powerful electronics, and a larger battery to drive all of this we can see why Apple went with a flash based player, but there will be a lot of customers who will not want the Touch due to this issue. We're left curious just how big an Touch with a hard drive would be; based on how the iPhone has been received, we could see something up to the size of the iPhone still being practical, especially since the Touch is starting out at only .31" thick.
With that said since it's an iPod and supposed to be primarily a media player, we'll jump to the more pressing question of its media player abilities, before getting in to the utilities and the subtleties of the hardware design. For playing audio, the classic iPod hierarchical navigation system is still in use, but with modifications for the touch screen. It's good to see that Apple decided to not rock the boat too much here, as the hierarchical navigation system is still every bit as good on a touch screen as it is the scroll wheel.
Unfortunately we can't say much else that's nice about the music UI, and it's not for a lack of trying on Apple's part. The touch screen just isn't a great replacement for the scroll wheel; Apple was tasked with replacing the perfect media player control and couldn't do it. A touch screen means we no longer have blind navigation and the touch screen can't offer the kind of precise controls the scroll wheel can, meanwhile the bigger screen isn't doing anything more for us.
Volume and song position are particularly bothersome, as the screen is only a good three-thumbs wide, making it easy to adjust something incorrectly or requiring more time and concentration to adjust something to precisely where you want it. It works, probably as well as Apple can ever hope to achieve, but it's definitely not as good as the scroll wheel.
We also are not very impressed with cover flow, the alternative UI that allows browsing songs by cover when the music application is open and the Touch turned on its side. It looks pretty and it's easy to use, but we're not sold on it actually being useful. On the one hand it's extremely reliant on having cover art for all of your songs, and on the other hand it's extremely reliant on you knowing the cover art for every album is to make efficient use of it. Text may not be as fancy as artwork, but in the digital age cover art just isn't as meaningful when we don't have a real copy of the art anyhow. We'd really like to have an option for a widescreen UI when the Touch is turned on its side, it would help us deal with the volume and song position issues we mentioned previously, due to the fact that we could have longer volume/position bars.
Other than these issues, the Touch is a competent audio player. The format support is the same as the Classic and the audio quality is the same (we'll have more on that later in our benchmarking section) so on a technical level it's just as good of an audio player as the Classic is. If it wasn't for the fact that the Touch used a touch screen and had to forgo the scroll wheel, it would be just as good as the Classic. The touch screen is the Achilles Heal of the device that drags it down as an audio player.
Yet on the other hand the Touch's video abilities put the Classic to shame; unlike the Classic it's clearly designed for video use. It still suffers from the general control issues brought about by the touch screen, but unlike the Classic the nearly device-sized screen makes watching videos practical and something that you'll actually want to do with the device. With a resolution of 480x320 (twice that of the Classic) and a 3.5" screen, the Touch is extremely comfortable to watch videos on. It's not quite perfect because of the control issues, but it's very close.
Incorrect formatting
Correct formatting
We did find an issue with letterboxed videos however; with one of our test videos encoded at 640x480 the touch proceeded to completely cut off the letterboxing, distorting the image. We don't have any other videos that this occurs on so we can't gauge how prevalent the issue is, but never the less it's there and bears mentioning.
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cmdrdredd - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
The Zune skips and pops? when? prove that to me? hell even the iPod doesn't skip or pop...that's in your recording and your piss poor 128kbps limewire bootleg downloads.Odeen - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
I am referring to Zune and iPod's inability to seamlessly transition from one song to the next (such as for a live concert recording, classical music, or a techno mix album).Since MP3's are composed of a fixed number of "frames" of approximately 418 bytes, any song has some amount of silence at the last frame. The Karma detects this silence and begins to decode the next track in the playlist before the previous track ends. As a result, the seamless transition from the CD (or live) source is preserved.
On the other hand, the iPod and Zune dumbly play the ENTIRE mp3 file. The sudden transition to silence, and beginning to play again sounds like a "pop". It has nothing to do with the bitrate or source of mp3 files.
Other file formats, like OGG and FLAC have metadata that tell the player the exact length of the recording. As a result, the player doesn't have to analyze the file for trailing silence, and this works even better in eliminating gaps. However, without 3rd party hacks, the iPod and Zune can't play those file formats either.
http://www.pretentiousname.com/mp3players/">http://www.pretentiousname.com/mp3players/
Tegeril - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
Perhaps you haven't used an iPod in a while, but the gapless playback feature works perfectly. Please try again.Odeen - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
It works for recent MP3's with proper song length metadata.It doesn't work for older MP3's without that information. The Karma can still play the older MP3's gaplessly by actually analyzing the audio data, whereas the iPod needs to have the song length tags spoon-fed to it.
Roffles - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
I currently own a Zune80. Although I watched an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" at lunch today, I use it 90% for listening to music.All these gimmicky features with new mp3 players are nice, but this review (and the designers of Zune and Ipod) lost focus of what an MP3 player is all about. It's about listening to mp3's right?
The main factors that should decide which player is best are:
1. GUI responsiveness, GUI design and GUI navigation.
2. Audio fidelity and customization.
3. Battery life
4. A higher level of customization
Everything else should be a distant second as they are the features more akin to PMP (personal media players). If it were not for the 80GB drive size, I would have stayed with a tried and true Korean mp3 player from Iriver or Cowon.
I would rather compare the Zune to my Cowon i7 and a2 as far as features are concerned. The Zune is a major firmware update away from being the ultimate mp3 player.
1. Cowon gives me a graphic equalizer (custom and several presets)
and lots of audio tweaking options such as jeteffect, BBE, Mach3Bass, MP Enhance, 3D surround, Pan and Play speed.
2. Cowon gives me more shuffle options
3. Cowon gives me a sleep timer and a wakeup timer so I can lullabye myself into an afternoon nap if I choose.
4. Cowon lets me customize text scroll speeds and other gui enhancements.
5. Cowon also gives me an FM player, and then lets me record FM radio with custom bit rates.
6. Cowon gives me a voice recorder with custom bit rates
7. Cowon gives me a text viewer
8. Cowon lets me adjust scan speed (good for very long recorded talk shows or joined albums and mixes that can be hours long)
9. Cowon gives me the option to use id3 tag browsing or filename browsing
All these options with exception to a few of the obvious ones on the list make listening to mp3's easier and more enjoyable...hence making it a better mp3 player.
There are DOZENS of other smaller tweaks and customization that I won't bother getting into, but I hope I'm making a good point here. Also, the audio output (power and fidelity at normal equalization) is amazing compared to anything I've heard from an Ipod or Zune.
VashHT - Thursday, January 31, 2008 - link
I have thought about replacing my Cowon X5 for a while, the mainr eason I won't buy an Ipod is because I don't want to use itunes or reformat all of my music into itunes format. One thing that I hate about all of these mainstream playes is they won't support .wav files. I back up all of my CD's in .wav format on my PC, and with my X5 I can just put them on there and not worry about converting anything. Sure the extra fidelity is pretty much lost when using most earbuds or headphones, but if I use the AUX output to hook them up to speakers or use decent headphones with it then the wav files obviously sound a lot better. Also with 80Gb of space or more the much larger file size of wav files becomes practically a non-point. Also, besides wav it supports a lot of other open formats, and for compressed format I would much rather use OGG than mp3.Ripvanwinkle - Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - link
Cowon all the way! My only complaint with my D2 is that itrefuses to make my coffee in the morning.
ThePooBurner - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
How can you do a High End MP3 player round up and not include the Creative Zen series? A Player that is technologically superior to both the Icrap and the Zripoff? That is all.Ryan Smith - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
I actually agree with you on the matter. We wanted to include a Zen and a couple other players, but we weren't able to acquire anything more than what we have today. As is the case when you're relaunching some kind of product coverage, we hope we'll be able to get players from additional vendors for future articles.michael2k - Monday, January 21, 2008 - link
How do you define "technologically superior"? The UI of the iPod (with the scrollwheel) can be seen as technologically superior (at least since it's introduction in 2001), though you can argue that since 2004 with the introduction of the Zen that Creative caught up. The hard drive of the iPod (which has been 1.8" since 2001) can also be noted as technologically superior, though again Creative caught up with their 2004 Zen Micro and Zen 1" and 1.8" products.Then there is battery life and size... If you want to claim Creative Zen is technologically superior, fine, but there are multiple facets to superiority here.